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Talk:TIE Interceptor/@comment-38591161-20190306043715/@comment-454133-20190307081808
I talked to a very skilled player at the game store today while we played, and he said Soontir is excellent. He's a cheap filler ace. It's fine if he dies, but when he lives, he does a lot of harm. Today that player flew Soontir with Predator and nothing else equipped (keep him cheap), and his whole list was built around arc-dodging (allies were Vader with Afterburners + Hate + FCS, Whisper with Fifth Brother + Elusive + FCS). A mere quarter of his points spent on Soontir can be a good investment, but he's a really good player and he's very confident with how he flies. He has to be: Soontir is amazingly delicate. What hurts the TIE Interceptor is the same thing that hurts the Fang Fighter: "Fragile-Agile" ships don't do well in second edition's meta. In First Edition they had Autothrusters and various other easy-to-use passive mods for offense and defense like Expertise & Predator, and that made them amazingly durable. Autothrusters alone would shave off a lot of damage. In second edition most passive mods have been removed on purpose, and the others made very hard to use, so it's a lot easier to lose a fragile-agile ship to bad rolls, which you will have, just a matter of when. A durable ship like a B-Wing can survive a few bad rolls and keep chugg'g along for a while before it implodes, but a TIE Interceptor or Fang Fighter could be just one bad roll from snuff'n it. That means you have to be really careful about how you fly them, how often to risk a token-less k-turn, when to take on stress and risk a boost to try to escape arc, when to spend a token or save it, how expensive you make them, etc. Whipser can get away with a lot because of the free dice mods from Fifth Brother. Vader's the same deal, providing his own force. And both have more than a raw 3 hull and 3 agility sitting between them and death. They can bear to have a bad roll or two, while Soontir can't. I've yet to do a TIE Interceptor or Fang Figher swarm. I know they could be fun in casual first edition (e.g. in Epic, I'd send lots of TIE Interceptors in a cluster and just rip foes to shreds), but I haven't done the swarm in the new meta. You can fit 5 in a list with points to spare, or four Fang Fighters with Advanced Proton Torpedoes. However, you could instead fit 4 of a mix of x-wings, b-wings, u-wings, and double-attacking y-wings (again, with points to spare) and I think those are better simply because they can afford to absorb shots and suffer some bad luck, due to their durability. TIE Interceptors and Fang Fighters are at a disadvantage in that kind of matchup; 2nd edition's meta isn't kind to fragile-agile, because agility dice are so fickle. Soontir is kind of ideal because he's a cheap, top-initiative ace with at least a chance at getting a free token for survival, and you don't need to invest much into him. But you have to fly him with the right allies so the enemy prefers to shoot them and not him (and don't give the enemy free shots on him when you can help it -- eventually one will land hard and kill him).